Tracy Flick redux!
Tracy Flick, the intensely ambitious candidate for student body president of her high school, was inarguably the star of Tom Perrotta’s short, but explosive 1998 novel “Election.” She became an even more notable character in 1999, after Reese Witherspoon played her in the cult classic movie adaptation of the same name. In both the book and the film, the teenage Tracy campaigns hard for the job she knows she deserves, but a male teacher at her high school — a civics teacher, no less — first subtly, then brazenly tries to interfere with the election and prevent her rightful victory.
“Election” was a dark comedy set in New Jersey that turned the volume up on the hushed drama of the suburbs. It doubled as a challenge to its suburbanite readers: What are you capable of, if you grow bored enough? It’s a question author Tom Perrotta may have been asking himself in the early days of the pandemic, thinking back to Tracy Flick, class of 1993, and wondering what she would be up to in the 21st century. No other train of thought could explain “Tracy Flick Can’t Win,” the newly released sequel to “Election.”
“Tracy Flick Can’t Win” comes over two decades after its predecessor hit shelves, and much has changed since the 1990s. In 2018, when this new novel kicks off, Flick is no longer the Georgetownbound firecracker, leaving high school rich in achievements, but lacking in friends. She’s all grown up now, a single mother of a daughter, and the assistant principal at a different high school in New Jersey, hoping to finally get the top job after the existing principal announces his imminent retirement.
It’s an appealing echo of “Election” — Tracy Flick is once again inside a high school, gunning for a job for which she’s overly qualified but has to fight way too hard to win. However, the meat of “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” stands in stark contrast to this synopsis. The majority of the book’s humdrum conflict comes from the wealthy school board president’s push for a school hall of fame and the doomed quest of a former professional football player alumnus, looking to make amends for his previous wrongdoings as part of his 12-step recovery program.
Regrets are plentiful in this new novel; Its leading lady has her fair share of them since her own big dreams, like so many of ours, were thwarted by life’s circumstances, and her ability to make friends hasn’t improved much since her adolescence. But more than that, Perrotta himself, sometimes through Flick, other times through prose painfully aware of its own decade, reconsiders the events of his 1998 novel using a modern lens, begging the question: Is “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” an extension of “Election,” oran apology for it?
The promise of being able to catch up with the oddly lovable Tracy Flick, an iconic character of the ’90s, all these years later, will surely draw in readers seeking a hit of nostalgia. However, it’s hard to feel Perrotta did Tracy justice here. Personality changes during the transition to adulthood are natural, but this Tracy feels like a completely different person than the one we met in “Election.” Her transformation from a youngster ready to take the world by storm, to an isolated, world-weary woman is as disheartening as finding her in another unwinnable situation so eerily similar to the one she navigated decades prior. Had “Tracy Flick Can’t Win” been a novel in which a defeated-feeling Flick got her groove back, this may have been an invigorating sequel to remember. Instead, it’s best forgotten.